Rehabilitation & kneeHabilitation

Rehabilitation We are delighted to have a Rehabilitation Specialist working within the practice. David Rigg has enormous experience of helping people recover from injury and accidents and enabling them to return to work or to their favourite sport. He has worked within the Army Rehabilitation service at Headley Court helping injured servicemen and women to recover from severe injuries, and he has also worked within the NHS applying his knowledge and skills with people on Incapacity Benefit.

David is now available to provide General Rehabilitation for patients of this practice and from elsewhere.

in addition, as a Practice, we are working together to develop the concept of Abilitation - being fit enough, active enough, mobile enough and cognitively able enough, to enjoy life to the full.The goal is to be free of chronic disease and free of the need to take tablets and medications.

There are several components to Abilitation and David will be working with the mobility component.

The first step in the mobility section of the Abilitation programme is to help patients achieve the best recovery from Total Knee Replacement, and kneeHabilitation- making knees better stillMany people who have had a knee replacement operation (TKR) will end up with a result that is not as good as they would like suffering more pain, stiffness, restriction in movement and less mobility and flexibility than they expected.

We believe that it is possible to improve the outcome after TKR with a targeted programme calledkneeHabilitation. This brings together the latest knowledge in the fields of exercise, nutrition, muscle strengthening, pain management, small group dynamics and cognitive behaviour therapy. Over 6 sessions you will learn the active steps you can take to reach the best possible result after your operation, in the shortest possible time. We combine this with acupuncture in the small group setting - this is carried out by Michael Monk.

Why small groups? Put simply the interaction of the group improves the end results because the individual members of the group tend to encourage and motivate one another. The small size of the group however still allows the programme to be tailored to each person in the group.

David Riggruns the programme with small groups (4 or 5 patients) over the 6 week course. With years of experience in rehabilitation and in motivating people in group settings he is the ideal person to get you going again, so that you really can make the most of the operation.

The kneehabilitationprogramme was originally designed for patients who have recently had a TKR and were recently discharged from hospital care, but it is equally appropriate for patients who may have had the operation some time before, and are still less than happy with the outcome.

Whether you have had a TKR, and are still experiencing pain, or just starting to get some pain and stiffness in the knees and would like to take steps to avoid the operation, we should be able to help you.

25% of patients (1 in 4) still have pain, poor quality of life, reduced mobility, and depression, a year after the operation, according to a study published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. This study suggests "the prevalence of pain after TKR is high, with 25% of patients reporting moderate-severe pain at 1-year after TKR. Pain experienced at 1-year post-operative was most frequently preceded by pain at 3-months post-operative, suggesting that for many patients a pain-free period after surgery is not experienced. The pain present at 1-year after TKR affected several domains of life, including functional ability, quality of life and mental health". J Bone Joint Surg Br 2009 vol. 91-Bno. SUPP I